Profile: mlambert890
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• • EverQuest: The Desert of Ro

  • Originally posted by brostyn
    

    If lore to some people is one sentence of explaining where an entire expansion with 10-20 zones came from then I suppose EQ has tons of it. Not that any other MMO has surpassed that, but others have certainly done the same. Actually other games make lore interactive by adding quest that forces you to learn the history of the land.

    
     

    Well... I suspect that you're a "negative outlook" kind of person (your sig even proudly proclaims you as a cynic).  This is VERY common among gamers, but doesnt make it a good attitude when it comes to being able to look at something objectively.

    You say EQ lore consists of "one sentence explaining 20 zones", yet I have spent COUNTLESS hours reading and enjoying TONS of backstory.

    Its not always fully complete or cohesive, but if you're a "glass is half full type" that WANTS to have fun (rather than just have fun hating things), then you view that as PART of the experience of the game.  In life, RARELY do you have complete knowledge and history is NEVER fully consistent.  There are ALWAYS "versions" of history.  Of course in this day and age of short attention spans, impossible to satisfy expectations, and spoiler sites, everyone basically wants a perfectly crafted linear story that they can rocket through but then also wants infinite content in which they are the hero - go figure.

    I'd rather have a rambling and sometimes flawed world filled with 1000s of stories sometimes only loosely connected that "feels" kind of real even if most of it goes nowhere.

    Sure the new games "force" you to "learn" the "lore" by forced questing, but most players will ignore it anyway and sit with the cheat sheet rocketing from step a to step z.  I dont see what the difference is.

    The other poster said it well.  LOTRO, Warcraft, Warhammer, etc has WELL established stories with COUNTLESS pages of novelization already written.  There are NO surprises there.

    EQ was a TOTALLY original property (sure it borrowed heavy conceptually, but Norrath was a new place) and after over a dozen expansions, its fleshed out really impressively and is actually quite a compelling fantasy universe.

    But of course if you're in the "nothing is good", "everything sucks", "there are only degrees of suckage" crowd, then Im sure none of this matters.  Seems that would be a really sad way to be.

  • Posted: 6/28/08 10:11 PM
    General Discussion
• • Detailed Info: Stuttering, Ram, Hard-drive, Vid Card, TIPS

  • Going to break from the pattern here.

    The OP actually is NOT good.  Just because something appears technical doesnt mean it is useful or accurate.

    That is NOT an accurate representation of what is going on with pixel OR vertex shaders.  The two are very different routines.

    Pixel shading routines apply effects on a per pixel level.  Imagine each frame of an animation as an individual bitmap image.  Before effects are applied, the image is flat (like old school games like Kings Quest :) ).  A pixel shader does some quick fancy math based on parameters to decide what new color EACH PIXEL should be AFTER the effect. 

    A vertex shader performs a similar function, but does it at a higher level.  At the vertex level (naming of these routines is kept pretty simple :) )  Vertex can be broadly defined as an objects 3D definition. 

    There are also geometry shaders which exist between the two.  Geometry shaders work on primitives or shapes.  So like, a triangle or square.

    So now imagine a textured cube is the image.  The vertex shader starts, sees it as an actual cube, and applies some effects.  Next, the geometry shaders sees it as a collection of squares and triangles (based on the angle that is showing) and applies effects.  Last, the pixel shaders see it as a bitmap (just 1280x1024 pixels - or whatever res) and apply effects.

    Usually, in modern game design, a combination of all of these routines are used depending on what is the least expensive (ie - most efficient) for the particular effect.

    NVidias G80s use a unified shader model architecture with big giant fully programmable units that can do whatever the software tells it.  Older architectures had dedicated hard wired units that were either pixel or vertex/geometry.

    DirectX (and OpenGL) are the software API side of this.  When the hardware paired with them can handle running the routine, it is run on the hardware.  These routines are VERY expensive and typically CANT HAPPEN in software.  The CPU is just too bad at floating point and too busy to do it.

    So the opening paragraph is just completely misunderstanding how the pipeline works and, therefore to me, the whole article is pretty useless.

    I think what is happening is that, once again, the unified shader model of the new cards is causing trouble for devs.  Nearly EVERY new game seems to have stuttering problems on the BEST hardware.  This is an optimization issue or an incompatibility somewhere.  Throwing endless RAM at it MASKS it, but isnt the root cause.

    I dont understand how this stuff is slipping past QA, to be honest.

  • Posted: 6/01/08 10:19 AM
    Age of Conan
• • Reach LvL 80 for nearly a week my opinion.

  • Originally posted by convict
    

     

    Originally posted by elocke
    

    Umm..no offense but you do realize its an mmorpg? What I mean by this is...you , in my opinion, played the game with the completely wrong mindset, you rushed to hit level cap. Why? YOu should have known the endgame wouldn't be ready for you if you are one of the first there. Endgame in mmorpg usually requires 10+ people.

    I haven't even broken level 29 yet with my 4 characters and you come along and try to tell me its a slap in the face? Not to me my friend. I'm enjoying it. Are there things that can be improved, fixed, etc.? Of course. show me one mmorpg that doesn't have that. bah, i'm done, you rush to 80 and then blame them for making it a front end game. Please, don't play WAR when it comes out, I don't want to hear you there either.

    Let me get this straight... We're now expected to play mmo's slow in order to give the devs time to "finish" or catch up on higher level content?

     

    They should have that done before launch. People will say the funniest things to defend something they like.

    Your blaming the customer for playing the game he payed for, and telling him to accept the fact the game is not finished. That's amazing. wow, what some people say.

    Fair enough... Let me ask you this... Have you ever liked ANY MMO?

    Has the OP?

    The EXACT same threads get recycled for EVERY MMO.

    In development you have the slavish fanboy types screaming about how ALL PREVIOUS MMOs will now be irrelevant.  You also have the eternal cynics saying "IT WILL FAIL"

    Once it is released you have the guys who max out in 1 week complaining about lack of endgame followed by guys who defend the devs and say "NO LIFE LOSER!" and then guys like you who say "THE GAME IS UNFINISHED!"

    Meanwhile, all along, people scream at the devs to have no bugs, fully finished game, get the thing out yesterday, etc.

    If a game takes too long in development, people lose interest, stop caring, move on to the next hype, etc.

    The real deal is that most of us are selfish, whining, short attention span, a-holes.  

    A dev team would have to have a deal with the devil and a magic wand to please the type of person who posts about MMOs on an internet forum.

    Blizard has kind of proven that they dont need to though.  They can just produce a fun game and ignore the types that are only happy when they are bitching.

  • Posted: 6/01/08 9:58 AM
    Age of Conan
• • Whats everyone opinion on why this game isnt super big?

  • To anyone who says CoX is "too repetitive" and thats why it doesnt have more subs, what is the reason for WoW's success then?

    I dont see how WoW (or really any EQ mould high fantasy MMO) is any less repetitive than CoX.

    Any MMO almost by definition is going to feature some level of repetition due to the character development aspects and also due to the fact that the world has to be finite in scope.

    I think its more that the super hero genre is a niche and people are less forgiving than they would be with a fantasy universe.

    When the entire world is basically forests, mountains, desert/ice/lava areas and every structure is a medieval style fort/castle/dungeon/town, people say 'well sure, its fantasy!'

    When you're talking about an urban setting, somehow offices and factories all looking the same (which is actually kind of realistic - Ive been in hundreds of RL office buildings and there isnt a lot of difference), bothers people more.

  • Posted: 5/21/08 6:50 PM
    City of Heroes
• • General: NCsoft Tackles Illegal Servers

  • Originally posted by bamwalla
    

    It is theft.  Theft of the original game code and theft of potential players.  They have every right to go after these other servers.

    It does show you a few things.  One, that there are a lot of people that like to play L2, just not the specific way (mostly grind and difficulty of obtaining items). It is a good game, runs smooth, fun classes, great graphics for a 4 year old game.   Another, is that people don't care much for the botters, they would much rather play on a server where everything is easier to buy and adena (in game money) is easier to earn. 15 bucks a month for a game that takes years ( or at least a poo-load of hours) to get a high level?

    Perhaps NCsoft should attack the botters and cheaters as hard as they are attacking these private servers. 

    If they dont attack the private servers, they set a precedent that private servers are ok.  Today it is some guys basement and some internet cafe.  Tomorrow it is a company in China with 100.000 users.  How will they attack THAT operation if they ignored the SMALL private servers?  Believe me... Precedent is strong in court.

    As for the botters, there are no botters on "private" servers because there are no PEOPLE there really and everyone just hits the "win" button or the "easy" button and gets what they want.  I dont consider "fun" just being able to run around in god mode and, just because many seem to, doesnt mean it makes sense for a company to cater to them or means it is ok to steal a game engine. 

    The argument of "well its a fun game, but its too hard, there are too many cheaters, there are botters, I dont have tons of time, I just want to BE lvl 100, and if I dont get all of that Ill steal it!" just isnt reasonable.

  • Posted: 4/10/08 9:26 PM
    General Discussion